Joseph's First Day on the Job

Man, this first day was so much more than I expected! I thought that I would come in, be introduced around, and then start studying. I didn't think I would use a laser at all today. BUT I TOTALLY DID!!!!!! But more on that later. I show up at the College of Optical Sciences, and I met my external advisor, Dr. Pierre-Alexandre Blanche. He introduced me to the labs where I'll be working at, introduced me to some people that I will be working with/seeing around, showed me different types of holograms (i.e. transmittance vs. reflective) and their different properties, and explained to me a little how holograms worked and were made. I got to see a few cool 3D holograms, such as a jet that you could see at different angles when you looked at it from different angles; a holographic book such that from one angle, you see one page, and as you move laterally it changes to another page; and an animation hologram of a rose going from a bud to blossom! It was some seriously cool stuff!

Then, to sort of understand how holograms worked, I had to go back a bit to a more fundamental concept, interference, as in an interference pattern, which led to my first "project": making an interferometer! I was handed some material for me to read over to get an idea about what I was to do, then Cory (a grad student who works under Dr. Blanche) gave me some mirrors, a beam splitter, and some other materials, put me in front of a laser, and essentially told me, "Now make an interferometer. Call me back when you're done." Of course, I was like, "Alright! Let's do it!" (in my head, of course. I wouldn't do that in front of grad students). I was eventually able to make one, took some pictures (which I will share in this post), and then was essentially done for the day. Got some reading material, get a plan for the next day (which sounds exciting, by the way!), and that's a wrap. Now for some pictures!

AWWWW YEAH, IT'S A LASER!

My Interferometer Setup. If you imagine a compass, at the center is the beam splitter, and at the cardinal points (NSEW) are mirrors, and at NNE is a lens. It shines to a wall off to the right.

Another view of my setup that includes the laser beam. Does that not look cool?!?!?!

The resulting beams shown on the wall. When they are separated, they are separate dots. You can see some interference where they overlap in the middle.

As I adjust the beams such that they overlap more, the width of the fringes (the bright and dark lines) get wider.

When the beams are essentially on top of each other, all you see is the interference pattern, and the width of the fringes are the widest at this point.

So that's my interferometer! Relatively simple setup, but you have to start somewhere! All pictures were taken with a D-SLR camera that the lab had, and it's the best gob-smacking freaking amazing camera I've ever seen and used! And it's related to optics, since cameras use a lot of optical properties. You have to use one to realize how AWESOME it is! By the way, if there's a way to make the pictures bigger, please let me know!

Now for some other random, interesting things of the day:

Dr. Blanche, my external advisor, is also a fellow Linux user! Now what are the chances of that?! (Well, being BASIS people, we must calculate this! If you take the number of people who use Linux in the world, divided that by the total population of the world, then take into account variable population density of both Linux users and just people in general.....)

I discovered a Trader Joe's product, called "Dark Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans." It's name says it all.

The lab I work in has an oscilloscope that is essential a computer within a huge accessory that has a lot of buttons that do different functions. No joke. It's a computer that run Windows XP and it has special software for the oscilloscope functions. There's even a DVD player on the thing! I don't know when you would ever watch a movie on the thing, but the important thing is that you can! Like, some guy looks at an oscilloscope, and thinks to himself, "You know, this could really use a DVD player," and next thing you know....

So that was my first day of my senior project, and I don't think it could have been any better! This senior project is gonna rock!